Kafka broker OOM-killer victim selection
On a bare-metal host running a Kafka broker plus several colocated agents, the kernel OOM-killer kills a random colocated agent (not Kafka) at 21:00, taking out log shipping. `dmesg` shows 'Out of memory: Killed process' with a high oom_score for the victim. The Kafka JVM heap is a modest 6GB but the host's overall 'available' memory hit near zero; most RAM is consumed by page cache from Kafka's heavy mmap'd segment I/O, and a batch backfill job started at 20:30 allocating large anonymous buffers. `vm.overcommit_memory` is default. Triage and mitigate.
What a strong answer looks like
Stop the bleeding first (mitigate), then form hypotheses from real signals. Separate root cause from symptom, communicate status as you go, and close with what prevents a repeat.
0:00 of about 40 min
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.